


Solutions for Better Living

by likeadeuce



Category: Avengers (Comic), Marvel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-07
Updated: 2010-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:13:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jessica Jones's life used to be very <i>noir</i>.  Now it's all midnight feedings and Scandanavian furniture.  Fortunately, there are angry robots to keep things in perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solutions for Better Living

The whole thing started because of Bobbi Morse. Or, to be fair, maybe it started because of her husband. The way she and Clint go at it sometimes, you can't always tell where the drama begins.

Not that my own marriage gives me room to talk. I doubt the names "Jessica Jones" and "Luke Cage" conjure up images of perfect domestic harmony for anybody who knows us. But when Luke and I argue, there's generally something at stake. With Bobbi and Clint, bickering is more of a recreational sport. A spectator sport, these days, even if they don't want it to be. Considering the crowd trying to live together in this house (cleverly dubbed not!Avengers' Mansion by Peter Parker, my former high school crush who -- because this is what my life has become -- recently turned out to be Spider-Man and also not to remember going to high school with me), Clint and Bobbi couldn't avoid having an audience for their fights, even if they wanted to. Not that the rest of us really mind. It's actually kind of comforting. Peter says, in that way he has a way of being wistful but making it sound like a joke, that listening to them is almost like having parents.

I got my first glimpse into this morning's round of the Bobbi/Clint wars when Bobbi stormed into the living room. Clint came in behind her, moving so fast he had to reach out to brace himself. Unfortunately, he did this by grabbing a floor lamp, which he sent crashing into the wall. I was lying back in the recliner, with Danielle on my chest, where she had literally (because this is how it goes when you try to raise a baby in a house full of superheroes with cabin fever) just fallen asleep. The only other person in the room was Carol (who, following Peter's nomenclature for the current status quo, is not!Ms. Marvel, but still my best friend and a pretty intimidating superpowered secret agent type), who had been sitting on the couch, twisting her hair around one hand and sighing down at a file with "CLASSIFIED" stamps all over it. She put the file down right away, because this was obviously more interesting -- or at least a blessed distraction, and we could all use some of those.

The battling Morse-Bartons had obviously been at it for a while (which is why I say I don't know who it started with), and I tried a "Can't you see my baby just fell asleep here?" glare on them, but they were too far gone for that. "When I said you're not exactly domestic," Clint explained, straightening the lamp and checking its stained-glass top for damage as he spoke, "I meant it as a compliment!"

"For future reference, _dear_," Bobbi answered, "compliments are not generally phrased as a list of areas in which the person in question is _lacking_."

"I only meant --" Clint cleared his throat and folded his hands behind his back, like a penitent Boy Scout. "Your strengths lie in areas such as, well, scientific brilliance. Kickass ninja superspy skills, and, um. Incredible -- hotness?" His delivery here was the opposite of smooth, which set off some alarm bells. I've known the guy for a while and he certainly can lay on the charm when it suits him. At the moment, he was playing up the stuttering, apologetic, but clearly twitterpated oaf of a husband role a bit too much. I could see this; Carol could see it (she was trying to catch my eye so she could make faces at me), and Bobbi Morse-Barton, Avengers' code name Mockingbird, former Agent of SHIELD, could sure as hell see it, too. She decided not to point it out, though, because it gave her a chance to arch her back, raise her chin, thrust her chest toward him and say, "I'm listening."

"Incredible," Clint repeated, putting his hand on her shoulder, "Incredible hotness." He touched her chin, tilted it upward and leaned toward her.

Now I've got a cold, cynical anti-romantic heart. Yes, I'm a newlywed; yes, I'm a new mom; yes, I love my husband and my little girl; but cynical anti-romantic-ness is something you learn over a lot of years and a lot of experience. Besides which, if you take a minute to look over my experiences (which I'm not getting into right now, I'm just mentioning it to make my point), they pretty much prove that _dumb, stupid luck_ controls everything that happens to all of us anyway. I only bring up my cold dead imperviousness to romance and sentiment and all that stuff that makes people go "aww!" because Bobbi and Clint's story kind of makes you want to believe in romance and destiny and all that, in spite of yourself. The way everyone thought she was dead, and then she just walked off that spaceship and back into his life, and they got back together like they never missed a beat? I'm a mean grouchy cynic but come on, I'm only human.

The point is, I want to believe in Clint and Bobbi, so that's one reason I was refusing to join in Carol's eye-rolling (the other was that if I made eye contact with her, it was totally going to crack me up). So instead of looking at Carol, I was looking at the happy couple -- which gave me a good view of Bobbi grabbing Clint's arm, twisting it behind his back and saying, "Like you're getting out of it _that_ easily." Seriously. Years in alien captivity and she doesn't miss a beat. I won't lie; I kind of want to _be_ her when I grow up.

"Hey, hey, I --" Clint managed to get out of her grip (I'm pretty sure she let him) and he only slammed the lamp back into the wall once in the process. "All I meant is -- look, it wasn't about men or women or -- phallocentric expectations or whatever the hell you said? It's just, see? All of us here --" He pointed to himself, to Bobbi, then to me and Carol. "All of us are Avengers. . ."

"I am _so_ not an Avenger," I said firmly, at which point the baby opened her mouth to yawn and stretch her arms over her head. There was a moment's pause in the conversation while everybody watched to see if she was going to wake up and I was going to have to kill somebody (from the look on Clint's face, he suspected it would be him, and so did his wife). But the crisis passed and Dani snuggled back against me.

Carol pointed at the baby. "Also not an Avenger."

"All I'm trying to say is, none of us here are exactly --" Clint paused, like he was contemplating how he was going to pull this off without insulting my maternal skills. "Bobbi and I were talking about the furniture in the bedroom, and I just said how nobody here is really fussy about housekeeping or whatever.

"I happen to be a certified interior designer," Carol said. Before I had time to question this claim -- she made me throw out all my perfectly good alley-salvaged bookshelves and go to IKEA with her one time, but I don't think they give certificates for that -- Captain America burst into the room.

"Did something happen to Steve's lamp?" There's no way he could have known, just from the noise it made, but he immediately turned to Clint.

I was contemplating how maybe it wasn't such a great thing to have so many superspies under the same roof -- sometimes, at close quarters, it's better to have fewer deductive skills or, at least, to pretend you do -- when Carol said, "You know what I think? I think us girls should all go shopping for some new furniture."

"I like that idea," said Bobbi.

"Absolutely, honey." Clint had apparently decided that he would like to have sex again at some point in his life. "I think whatever you pick out will be great."

Captain America spoke then in a strangled kind of voice. "New --" he said. "New furniture?" He met my eyes and, right then, Captain America and I totally had a moment.

*

I'm not trying to claim that Cap and I are close. We're not even technically on a first-name basis. That's because I have respect for the position. Also because, as far as I know, only Cap's girlfriend calls him 'James.' And because other people call him Bucky, but I think of Captain America and Bucky as totally different people, so it just sounds weird, like if Scrappy Doo got taller and suddenly you were supposed to call him Scooby. So I'm more comfortable sticking with "Captain America", which is fairly appropriate to his level of gravitas, even when we're just hanging around the house. And also, as far as first names go, I'm not entirely sure that he knows mine.

But! There are some areas in which the Captain and I are obviously completely simpatico. For instance: this house did not need more furniture. This house needed fewer people. Or, at best, the same number of people with less complicated problems. I knew this and, when Captain America met my eyes, I could tell that he knew it, too.

Still, if it came down to a contest between Cap looking meaningfully but silently into my eyes and Carol loudly making redecorating plans, it wasn't going to be much of a contest. She teamed up with Bobbi and they managed to get Cap to admit that the house wasn't _really_ meant for this many people, so there weren't really enough things to go around and also (Clint helped with this one, just by glancing at the lamp) that some of the nicer things could probably stand to be in storage. Needless to say, I didn't want anything to do with this scheme -- one trip to IKEA with Carol Danvers is enough for a lifetime -- and I was about to successfully plead motherly obligations, when Luke and Wolverine came back from whatever they'd been doing.

"I'll take the little lady," my husband declared, scooping up Danielle. "You _deserve_ to go out and have some fun with your friends." And the thing is, totally and without a doubt, Luke meant it. I tried to use my telepathic powers to say, "No no no please, I'd rather stay here with you. With Dani asleep and everybody else out we can even have sex, remember what sex was like?" Unfortunately, I don't _have_ any telepathic powers. So Luke just bent down, kissed me on the forehead, and murmured, "Never let anybody say I don't treat my wife like a queen." And right then, just for that minute, everybody in the room was looking at _me_, thinking about how lucky I was to have found such an amazing guy. What the hell was I supposed to do?

So that's how I ended up on the bus, riding through Brooklyn, seated between Carol, who was standing up and looking out the windows on one side of us, and Bobbi, who was staring intently at the front, as if memorizing the face of everybody who got on board. We could have taken the subway straight to 9th Street, and hopped the special IKEA shuttle bus. But that was too direct for Mockingbird and not!Ms. Marvel. We added an hour to our travel time, easily, because they insisted on an indirect route. I guess I don't blame them. We _are_ a bunch of fugitives from what cable news loosely terms "justice," and since they both used to be (probably still are) spies, they know all these evasive techniques. This isn't my first rodeo, either, though. I used to be a private investigator, and what that taught me is that if somebody really wants to find you, sooner or later they will. I'm not going to argue this point, though. They're heroes, they need to do the things they know how to do to make us all feel safe, even if it means taking an unnecessary bus ride, while we're all wearing sunglasses and ballcaps, making ourselves look conspicuous trying not to be conspicuous.

I would have felt better about it if my tits didn't hurt because I forgot to pump before we left. I would have felt better if we weren't going to fucking IKEA.

"Am I the only one who saw 'Fight Club'?" I asked. "Remember how IKEA drove Edward Norton crazy?"

"What's 'Fight Club'"? Bobbi asked.

"Misogynistic proto-fascist crap," Carol said.

"Going to the top of the Netflix queue," I said.

"We're fugitives," Carol hissed in my ear, leaning down close. "We're fugitives and you have a Netflix queue?"

"Oh please," I laughed and said, quite loudly, "Do you have any idea how many J. Joneses there are in Brooklyn?"

At this point, if Bobbi had been rolling with our comic timing, she would have looked puzzled and asked, "What's Netflix?" But she was squinting suspiciously at a bearded man in a Phillies jacket who had just gotten on the bus, her gaze intent in a way that suggested she had decided to stop listening to Carol and me altogether.

I'm not going to lie; that decision raised my opinion of her even higher.

"Stay here," Bobbi said, and walked, at a measured pace but with clear purpose, toward the front of the bus.

Carol slid down into the seat beside me. "Well," she said. "She's certainly interesting." She said it in such a very _Carol_ way, the tone she gets when she's going to suggest some kind of project for self-improvement (or rather Jessica-improvement), that I'm convinced she's going to say something like, _You and Bobbi should bond about how both of you were abducted_, and then I'm going to have to yell at her on the bus.

"I guess," I said, suddenly getting interested in looking for the IKEA catalog Carol had stashed in my purse.

"You've got such a crush on her," Carol whispered.

"I -- uh -- wha --" I turned to her and hissed, "Carol! How could you --? She's married! I'm married! And I'm not even -- I'm not --" Pro tip. If you happen to have a best friend who is honestly, deep down, the best person in the world, but who is also passionately devoted to being right about everything -- if you happen to have such a friend, and one of the things you want to convince her of is that you're completely one hundred percent straight? Don't ever have sex with her, even a little bit. It gets in the way of deniability. On the other hand, when talking to such a friend, you don't have to deny everything so you can cut straight to the chase. "Do you think her husband would be into it?" I asked.

Carol raised an eyebrow. "What about _your_ husband?"

"Oh, please, I know what Luke would think. Besides, the man owes me big time for --"

Fortunately, I didn't have to finish that thought because Bobbi had rejoined us after giving the Phillies fan a once over. "Not armed," she said matter-of-factly. "Just acting weird because he's got some kind of stolen meat product in his jacket. Probably bacon."

One of us could have asked what that was about, but we didn't, because we all knew about living in New York. Instead, Carol said, "Jessica was just wondering whether Clint would like-- " and, before I could kick her (which I totally would have), continued, "the Ektorp collection more, or Karlstad?"

"I don't know." Bobbi frowned. "Do we have a catalog?"

"I stuck it in Jessica's purse."

Damn Carol. She was determined to get me involved in a conversation about Swedish furniture. Like it was going to matter anyway.

 

*

It didn't matter, of course. When we got off the bus across Beard Street from the store, it was pretty apparent that the universe did not care one bit about our shopping plans. But one of us had to ask the question and, as the member of our trio who was not currently a superhero, I felt like it was my job to play the naive civilian. "Is that -- a giant robot?" I asked.

In her commanding, matter-of-fact tone, Bobbi -- no, Mockingbird now -- said, "That's Awesome Andy the Awesome Android."

Carol scowled. "I thought he was good now."

"Obviously not _now_," Mockingbird shot back.

"All we know is that he's attacking IKEA," I pointed out. "That could really go either way."

"There are innocent people in there," Mockingbird said firmly.

"If you think about what gentrification has done to this city," I said, "innocent might be a stretch." Not to sound unconcerned, but the damage didn't look that bad so far. And besides, I added, "The Fantastic Four will probably show up any minute." We even waited for a moment, straining our eyes for signs of the Fantasticar. Awesome Andy was made by the Mad Thinker and he really is one of the FF's villains.

No sign of a Fantasticar.

Carol sighed, "I'm going to have to fly, aren't I? I _hate_ flying in civilian clothes, and I wasn't about to wear Spandex under silk."

Mockingbird raised her eyes to the rooftops. "If only we had more than one flyer."

Carol and I said at the same time, "We _have_ more than one flyer." Carol meant me. I didn't.

I nudged Mockingbird. "I don't fly!" She stared at me. "I don't have any powers. You know that!"

"No! I'm sorry, I don't have the handbook memorized. Why are you called Mockingbird, if you don't fly?"

"It's -- the costume -- Huntress turned out to be taken -- "

"Not important right now!" Carol barked. "Come on, Jessica, we'll be in and out before anyone figures out who we are."

I groaned. "I _hate_ flying, you _know_ that!"

Bobbi stared at me. "_You_ can _fly_?"

"Not _well_ I mean, I guess, a little during the invasion, but my marriage was at stake!"

"She has superstrength too," Carol said firmly, and before I could say _not that much_!, she looked me in the eye and said, "You know perfectly well you have this in you."

I still thought we could have waited for the Fantastic Four to show up. Except, well, Mockingbird seemed to be enjoying this. "We have _two_ flyers," she said gleefully. "Two flyers with superstrength. When we used to run drills at SHIELD, I would have killed for those assets. I'll handle tactics and -- are those smaller androids on the ground?"

"Mini-Awesome-Andys?" I squeaked. They were actually kind of cute.

"I can take them," Bobbi said. "See that piping for sale n front of the store? Perfect quarterstaves. We'll do this and get out of here before Norman Osborn knows what happened. Okay, Jessica?"

"Okay?" I was never the most confident, going into battle, but, to be honest, I've never gone into battle as part of a team, with secret handshakes and slogans. I put out my hand and took Carol's. Bobbi slid her gloved hand over ours and as we stood there, I thought I should say something like, "Avengers Assemble!" But not that, because I'm not one of them. My eye caught the blue and gold billboard next to the store, and I blurted out, "Solutions for better living!"

Go ahead and laugh. "Avengers Assemble!" sounds pretty stupid when you think about it, too.

*

Not only did the Fantastic Four make it to the scene, they brought coffee. Coffee and thermal blankets because, well, I don't know what those androids sprayed on us but it was cold.

"You didn't really leave anything for us to _do_," Reed Richards said, frowning as he shook the last drop out of the Thermos into my cup. Like he blamed us, a little, for having disabled the robots so quickly.

"You could try reprogramming that android so it _stays_ reprogrammed this time," Carol snapped.

Reed looked wounded. "I can't keep an eye on the Mad Thinker twenty-four hours a day."

Bobbi cocked her head. "Maybe if you and your boss would spend more time locking up criminals and less time chasing down heroes --"

"Norman Osborn is _not_ my boss," Reed said, "and furthermore --"

"Now now." We never heard past Reed's furthermore, because a fresh thermos floated in between us, and Susan Richards turned visible before our eyes. "Let's not start refighting old battles. These ladies saved the day. Take a moment to appreciate that."

"Jessica saved the day," an enthusiastic voice said, next to me, and I was about to make a biting comment about Carol concocting this whole outing as some kind of self-esteem building exercise to prove what a good friend she was, when I realized the comment came from Bobbi. Which was totally different.

"I just, you know," I said, feeling the warmth rise to my face. "It wasn't a big deal. I dodged a little, I weaved a little. Mostly instinct?"

"Beginner's luck?" Bobbi said it like she was teasing. She'd clearly decided I was an old pro who had been holding out on her.

Now the blush really came over my face, and suddenly it wasn't such a gratifying feeling. "No," I said quietly. "Definitely not a beginner." Or lucky, not when it came to superheroing. But I wasn't ready to get into that.

"That reminds me," said Reed. "Are you even registered?"

"Oh, don't you dare!" Susan snapped, with a force that I, at least, had never expected to hear from America's sweetheart. But, I remembered, they'd been on opposite sides of the superhero registration issue. Apparently the tension hadn't completely gone away.

Reed raised his hands and stepped back. "I only meant," he said quietly, "they should get out of here before Norman's people decide to come clean up."

"Done." Carol stepped toward us, slipping some kind of superspy commlink into her pocket. "Dr. Strange has set up some charms to cover our tracks. It'll be like we were never here. Now, girls?"

We slid out of the blankets but before I could walk away, Susan grabbed me in a hug. "Kiss the baby for me," she said, planting her lips firmly on my cheek. "This will all be over before we know it," she whispered, but it seemed like Sue had been talking that way for years, and I wondered if she believed it anymore.

Across the street was an unmarked van I didn't recognize, but as soon as we slipped in, Bobbi got behind the passenger seat and threw her arms around the man in it. "Hey, gorgeous," she said.

"See where trying to be domestic gets you?" Clint said.

Meanwhile, I pressed my lips to the driver's smooth-shaven head. "Do I want to know who's watching our baby?"

"Captain America," Luke answered righteously, and really, what kind of superpowered Mom would have a problem with that?

Carol climbed into the far back of the van and managed to do it without making any gagging noises that were _too_ loud. Whatever. I was happy right then. Both Bobbi and I crashed back on our seats at the same time, and made eye contact. She smiled a huge smile at me, and I could feel myself doing the same. "You are some amazing mystery woman, Jessica Jones. Luke! I'm discovering all these crazy things about your wife. Did you _know_ she can fly?"

"You _fly_?" Luke said in mock amazement, and the rest of us laughed.

"Sorry," Bobbi shrugged. "You guys forget I've been dead. Nobody tells me anything." She touched my shoulder. "Some night when the kid's in bed, maybe we can swap stories." I caught Luke looking at me in the rearview mirror, and was about to say something caustic. Swapping stories has never been my idea of a good time, and nobody knew that better than my husband.

But before I could open my big mouth, I noticed Clint up there in the passenger seat. He had turned his head, just a little, to look at his wife, and something in his look told me he was as surprised by her offer as Luke was wary of my reaction. I hadn't thought of it this way before, but it figured that abduction and torture by aliens, and whatever the hell else had happened to her, hadn't made Bobbi over inclined to share, either. Her offer really meant something, and maybe I ought to treat it that way. Meanwhile Clint and Luke were poised just alike, conditioned to jump in and offer damage control for the hysterical overreactions of their short-tempered partners, dealing with our all-too-familiar traumas. I wanted to punch them both. I wanted to kiss them both. God only knew what I wanted from Bobbi.

"Maybe we can do that sometime," I said, then leaned back in my seat, stretching my arms above my head. "I have a feeling we all have a lot that we could stand to talk about. Right now, let's just go home to our overcrowded house and its out of date furniture."

Clint laughed. "You guys didn't even buy anything? Bucky's gonna be _so_ relieved."

I smiled at Bobbi one more time, then leaned my head back over the seat so I was looking at Carol. "Whatever you're going to say, save it," I warned.

Her mouth twitched, "Solutions for better living?" she asked.

"Die in a fire," I said. Then I reached back and laced our fingers, because that's what pain-in-the-ass best friends with a compulsive need to be right about everything are for.

"I think we should go with the Karlstad," Carol said, then whispered, "and Clint is _totally_ into the idea."

"Whatever," I said, not sure I wanted our lives to get more complicated than they already were.

As if, I thought, looking around at my husband and all of our crazy, exasperating, brave and amazing superhero friends, keeping things simple was ever really an option.


End file.
